Bayer announces plan to end glyphosate-based herbicide sales to US consumers by 2023

Bayer announced it will remove glyphosate from the U.S. consumer lawn and garden marketplace as soon as Jan. 2023. The company will replace glyphosate in the consumer lawn and garden segment with other “known and well-established active ingredients.”

With more than 30,000 unresolved cancer lawsuits—90 percent from the U.S. residential lawn and garden market business segment—Bayer said the change will help manage litigation risk.

“Let me be very clear that (this decision) is exclusively geared at managing litigation risk and not because of any safety concerns,” Werner Baumann, CEO of Bayer AG, said.

The new products will continue to be sold under the RoundUp brand.

“What is new will be the formulation or formulations and will include multiple active ingredients,” Liam Condon, president of the Bayer Crop Science Division and a member of the Bayer AG board of management, said.

While “farmers continue to rely on Roundup containing glyphosate to deliver crops,” Baumann said farmers and retailers will have continued access to the glyphosate-based herbicides, according to AG Web Farm Journal.

“The agricultural segment is a completely different segment with very different volumes, of course, different labels and different dosages that are used,” Condon said. “We think from an overall labeling point of view, it is a very well-protected market.”

Bayer said it will work with the EPA to provide more information regarding glyphosate to end users so they know “about the science to ensure more-informed purchasing and application decisions.”

“We will also set up a new website by the end of 2021 that will provide even more transparency on the extensive science related to glyphosate,” Baumann said.

The company is currently working on new formulations to replace glyphosate in the U.S. consumer lawn and garden segments by 2023 and will register them with the EPA pending regulatory approval.

“We are working with some standard and proprietary formulations that would be sold under the Roundup brand and that would be superior,” Condon said. “Once we have more news from EPA, then we will be more detailed.”